The PPTA says the transitional provision in the Government’s Equal Pay Amendment Bill could block the union’s ongoing equal pay case, forcing them to go back to square one after 16 years and about $400,000.

The agency in charge of marketing NZ education overseas, Education New Zealand, has emailed private training providers asking for feedback on “international chatter” about the proposal to merge all 16 existing polytechnicsinto a single NZ Institute of Skills and Technology.

The system set up to support teenagers kicked out of mainstream schools is the latest tranche of the education sector in line for a shake-up, as the Government reveals plans to change a model it says is “not working” for at risk youth.

A senior staff member from Rangitoto College, New Zealand’s largest secondary school, is said to have told Year 13 female students, who are permitted to wear mufti, on several occasions this year that what they’re wearing is proving a distraction to their male teachers, and that the male teachers “didn’t know where to look”.

Uniform policies at several of New Zealand’s premiere schools are being slammed as “racist” and “discriminatory” for prohibiting Afros, braids and other natural hairstyles common among people of African descent.

Media releases

Māori Development Minister, Hon Nanaia Mahuta, says the Crown’s commitment to ensure basic te reo is spoken by a million people in 2040 took a major step forward. The Maihi Karauna, the Crown’s Māori language strategy, was launched at Te Matatini in recognition of the festival’s passion and commitment to te reo. This strategy is intended to complement the Maihi Maori which supports iwi, hapū and whānau aspirations towards te reo māori revitalisation.

The new regime, to be unveiled by Education Minister Chris Hipkins today, will require home-based carers to have, or be working towards, early childhood education qualifications at Level 4 in the qualifications system – one year beyond the top high school exams.

New research on workload, hours of work and sources of stress on school leaders’ health and wellbeing conducted from August to November 2018 shows that school leaders are working long hours and are significantly more stressed than the general population.

Opinion

In this modern age, men are perceived as being the change that is needed for Early Childhood Education (ECE), but I am of the opinion this is wrong. Men and women are both needed in the teaching profession across all age groups and should be valued as equal contributors to the intellectual minds of the younger generation.

Media releases

NZGovt: The government subsidised education and care of young children that takes place in the educator’s home or in the child’s home will become professionalised, to ensure better and more consistent quality, Education Minister Chris Hipkins announced today.

NZ Maori Council: With reforms abound in the education sector from schools to technical and vocational education, the New Zealand Maori Council has launched a new national taskforce to bring new ideas and thinking to the concept of lifelong learning “This is not just about one part of the education system for Maori its about the end to end life long process of learning and how we can harness that to project our people forward.” Said Matthew Tukaki.

This week, the government proposed a major shakeup of New Zealand’s polytechnics and industry training organisations (ITOs). Associate professor at MAINZ Dr John Bassett weighs up both the pros and cons of this controversial move.

It was a community triumph. In 2000 the Southern Institute of Technology student numbers were 1100 and declining. Chief executive Penny Simmonds said the situation was dire. SIT needed a point of difference and they found it through a united Southland front and the zero fees scheme.

Plans for a $206 million research facility at Lincoln University have been scrapped. And Selwyn MP Amy Adams has laid the blame for the failure at the feet of the Education Minister Chris Hipkins, saying the lack of support from the Government was a “slap in the face”.

On Monday, Audit New Zealand released its bombshell report into spending at Wintec on overseas trips, gifts and redundancy and severance payouts. The 27-page report found Wintec was unable to provide an account of how it spent public money.

Europe is looking to force Google, Facebook and others to share revenue with artists, journalists and other creators and build copyright “upload filters”, in the EU’s biggest overhaul of copyright law in decades.

The shakeup of our polytechnics is long overdue. It is ludicrous to have a bums-on-seats model for funding. And in this day and age, when the world is moving faster than ever before, we can’t have crusty old lecturers standing in front of a whiteboard, training the workers of tomorrow.

Media releases

Tertiary Institutes Allied Staff Association: The Tertiary Institutes Allied Staff Association (TIASA) which represent non-teaching – (allied/professional) – staff throughout the NZ tertiary education sector, says the reform of vocational education proposals released by Education Minister Chris Hipkins are the biggest changes since the 30 year old ‘Learning for Life’ tertiary education changes that created the current system.

Quality Public Education Coalition: QPEC welcomes the Minister’s refreshing approach to Vocational Education, including the proposal for a new funding model for the sector that removes competition among institutes. We look forward to much enhanced certainty, stability, and equity for the polytechnics.

NZEI Te Riu Roa: The Minister of Education’s bold proposal for reform in the polytechnic sector announced on Wednesday could have a positive impact on those early childhood teachers who access their training through polytechnics by reducing unnecessary competition and improving teaching, says NZEI Te Riu Roa President Lynda Stuart.

With polytechnics and training organisations facing what one commentator called a “perfect storm” of demographic shift and government policy changes, Hipkins on Wednesday released his proposal to strengthen the “broken” sector.

The proposed NZ Institute of Skills and Technology will take over programme design and administration for all campuses of what are now 16 separate polytechnics. It will also take over enrolling and managing apprentices and industry trainees from what are now 11 industry training organisations (ITOs).

Similar to the Tomorrow’s Schools review, at its core the proposal removes competition from the education sector. The concern is that Education Minister Chris Hipkins may be pushing his ideological education agenda too far with these changes, with a degree of support from the other side of the aisle needed for reform to be enduring.

Grant Burns, principal of Tauraroa Area School, said each Kahui Ako has its own individual student achievement goals, but the joint goal of the five was to improve student wellbeing by tackling three major issues – attendance, transience, and mental health.

Opinion

EDITORIAL: Chris Hipkins must have some idea of what British Prime Minister Theresa May is going through. The pursuit of a perfect solution in an imperfect world, the promotion of one group’s interests without impacting on those of others.

This year’s Waitangi commemorations will be mostly remembered for two debates – whether the Prime Minister should be able to recite the detail of the Treaty of Waitangi, and whether the teaching of the Treaty and colonial history in New Zealand should be compulsory.

Media releases

NZGovt: Education Minister Chris Hipkins has released wide-ranging proposals for strengthening vocational education so that school leavers get high quality training opportunities, employers get the skills they need and New Zealanders are better equipped for the changing nature of work.

Skills Active: Skills Active Aotearoa, the ITO for sport, recreation and performing arts, applauds the Education Minister’s decision to make a much-needed step-change to stem the flow of money into supporting the failing polytechnic network in New Zealand, says chief executive Dr Grant Davidson. However, industry training is a comparatively lean and nimble delivery system, owned and driven by the industry it serves.

NZITP: The CEO’s of the New Zealand Institutes of Technology and Polytechnics (NZITP) support the motivation for the Government’s proposal for major reform of the sector and welcome Minister Hipkins’ commitment to continue consultation and listen to the sector.

NZ Union of Students’ Associations: ‘What we need in New Zealand is a vocational education system that caters for students of a diverse background, and for communities with diverse needs. The idea of having Regional Leadership Groups focusing on this as opposed to independent institute councils focusing on competing against the neighbouring institute will be much more effective, and should give greater opportunity to fulfil our treaty responsibilities’ says James Ranstead, President of the New Zealand Union of Students’ Associations.

Tertiary Education Union: Staff can turn their attention to opening doors for students and communities with creative teaching, learning, and research under bold changes proposed for vocational education says the Tertiary Education Union.

BCITO: “Vocational training is vitally important to New Zealand’s continued growth. There is no doubt that the Vocational Education Training system (VET) has experienced issues for a long time which need addressing. We also believe there are some parts which are working very well. The key is to protect what works while updating the areas which are failing to deliver for New Zealand,” says Quinn.

International linguistic app Drops has entered the growing New Zealand market for te reo Māori language tools. Drops allows users to match an image and the corresponding word in Māori with a swipe of their finger.

Opinion

I was very excited to see the outcomes of Bali Haque’s Tomorrow’s Schools Review. It is insightful, clear, and I think, largely correct. I hope we have the courage to implement the review’s recommendations – all bar one.

I don’t believe that school-based teacher preparation pathways will improve the quality of new teachers, and believe it will have a raft of unfortunate consequences for schools and their learners.

Media releases

Open Polytechnic: Ako Aotearoa, delivers professional learning development opportunities to New Zealand’s tertiary teachers, trainers and educators. It has signed an agreement to use the Open Polytechnic’s iQualify learning platform for their course delivery.

Whanau Manaaki Kindergartens: Parents wanting quality early childhood education for their children should look for services that have 100 percent qualified teachers, says one of the country’s largest Kindergarten Associations.

Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern is foreshadowing a major restructuring of polytechnics and institutes of technology, which have cost the Government $100 million in recent bailouts. The restructure is expected to recommend turning the vocational education sector into a flexible network that focuses on greater co-operation between institutions to meet the needs of business.

The National Party says the Government’s plans to reform polytechnics and institutes of technology will lead to 1000 job losses, a radical centralised model, and the closure of polytechnics in the regions.

A “bums on seats” approach puts children’s safety and development at risk, teachers told Stuff. The 300 services that had their licence downgraded in the past two years are the tip of the iceberg, they said, and problems could go undetected for years. Stuff readers working in ECE joined the chorus of teachers voicing concerns about the sector. Here’s what they had to say.

Education Minister Chris Hipkins is getting the Ministry of Education to investigate claims of big or cancelled classes. The New Zealand Post Primary Teachers’ Association (PPTA) is campaigning for the problem to be urgently addressed with warnings it will only worsen if action was not taken.

Liz Kane, who runs Liz Kane Literacy, is working in schools in the Manawatū region and across the country to help teachers better teach children to read, write and spell. She also teaches them how to work with children with dyslexia and other learning difficulties.

The Ministry of Education has made contact with Building Research Association of New Zealand over revelations a fireproof plywood may have been used in a school hall that was found to be much less flame-resistant.

Tauranga’s newest primary school has officially opened with about 70 more pupils than expected. Taumata School in Pyes Pa opened its gates to 150 pupils yesterday, with children, teachers and parents welcomed on to the site for the first time.

NZGovt: The previous National Government allowed New Zealand’s vocational education system to drift so badly it has let our businesses, our young people and our communities down, and is in need of a reset, Education Minister Chris Hipkins said.

NZUSA: In Aotearoa New Zealand, everyone should have the opportunity to attend some form of tertiary education, and to have a positive experience along the way. Our Institutes of Technology & Polytechnics (formally known as ITP’s) teach over 170,000 of our tertiary students per year and are tasked with providing mainly vocational education to our regions and cities.

Does the development of arithmetical thinking require a large primate brain, or do other animals face similar problems that enable them to process arithmetic operations? We explored this using the honeybee.

Media releases

NZGovt: In a major economic speech delivered this morning Jacinda Ardern set out how the Government’s plans to build greater resilience in the economy in the face of global economic headwinds. Education Minister Chis Hipkins will make public soon options to reform polytechnics and the wider skills training sector to raise the status of vocational training as a career and ensure the sector is more aligned with and responsive to business and national and regional skills shortages.

TEU: In its report Changing Lives, the TEU emphasises that staff conditions of work are students’ conditions of learning. Unless the Minister puts the relationship between staff and students at the centre of a reformed ITP sector, his reforms are bound to fail. It was a timely reminder from the TEU, coming just one week before the Minister announces radical plans to restructure ITPs and change the vocational education and training system.

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This blog is New Zealand Council for Educational Research's media monitoring site. The purpose of this blog is to provide readers with a daily listing of all education related stories that appear in New Zealand’s media space. The news content, editorials, or items listed on these pages do not represent NZCER’s opinions in any shape or form.

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